Pete Dupuis: The Deep Dive Interview

Speaker: [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:00:30]

Hello my friend. I’m curious, have you ever wanted Fisher or me to spend a full day personally coaching you one-on-one about your business? Well, we’d actually do that. They’re called mentorship days, and we spend a couple hours reviewing everything. We could possibly know about your business. We take a look at every quantitative and qualitative marker that represents kind of your [00:01:00] business health, and we thoroughly review all of that.

We look through your personal and professional and financial goals, then we help you make a plan to get there. And there’s only really a hit one hitch. Actually, there’s kind of two hitches. One is that we have very limited availability. This takes us a lot of hours. We spend hours reviewing your business.

Then we spend hours on a call with you. It’s really a lot of work, but we love doing it. So the first hitch is there’s not a lot of availability. The second hitch is that it’s not cheap. But if you like the idea of working with us one-on-one, this is your chance to [00:01:30] get basically a year of coaching in a day.

It’s a real deep dive. So what I want you to do, if you’re interested at all, just for a conversation about it, click the link down below in our show notes. Go over to our Instagram page and DM us the word mentorship, and we’ll get back to you with all the details about what it costs and how it works, and see if we’re the right fit.

So go over to our Instagram, DM us and mentorship, and hopefully we’ll be talking soon.

Speaker 2: This podcast will be called Pete DePue. Who is he? Really? [00:02:00] Hi Pete. How you doing today?

Speaker 3: Chat. GPT. Come up with that for you.

Speaker 2: No, I just made up on my own. That’s human made.

Speaker 3: It’s time to figure out human made. Who I am. Let’s do this.

Speaker 2: Yes. I would say for careful, I avid readers of the footer for our emails. I actually recently put disclaimer in there to be like, it’s, I write these just so you know.

I write these because some, someone, actually, some she’ll, she’s not gonna listen. She’s not gonna care. I don’t wanna say her name, who cares? Someone yelled at me the other day on emails about being like, this is a bot could try with your bot messages.

Speaker 3: That was one of my favorite [00:02:30] rants of our annual planning, getting rid of, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of you going off on that.

I only guess I brought up what was the biggest and best blowout ranch from you at that. Do you remember?

Speaker 2: Oh, oh gosh. That, yes, it’s coming back to me. It was the gym owner that, again, you might be listening by the way.

Speaker 3: Sorry.

Speaker 2: Maybe we’ll, maybe we’ll spare, but let’s just say there was a gym owner in our world who was concerned about the practices of a company that mirrored [00:03:00] exactly how gyms run their business.

And I was a guest. I was a guest. But we’ll leave you listening. We’ll leave you curious there, listener, open loop. So have to come and hang out with us and ask us. We’ll tell you privately when we hang out. But speaking to privately, Pete. We’re gonna take a little journey in your head, so avid listeners have already recently, by the time this goes live, we’ve heard Michael interview me and me interview Michael.

And now we’re gonna give Pete the same questions, but to make extra fun, I gave him literally no warning. Has no idea what I’m gonna ask. Pete, are you ready?

Speaker 3: I am

Speaker 2: for extemporaneous answers

Speaker 3: and if it hurts, if I find this to be an uncomfortable. [00:03:30] And a painful experience. I reserve the right to kick it right on.

Forward to Ben. And I want to declare that I’m interviewing Ben next and

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think re regardless we should do that. And my hope yours for maximum emotional discomfort for you.

Speaker 3: Good.

Speaker 2: Because it’ll be good. It’s branding, right? It’s, you’ll be so vulnerable. He becomes so, it’s so hard for me to admit this.

It’s so vulnerable. Okay, Pete. Ready to get authentic. Go. First question is, alright. Something you’ve changed your mind about in the recent past.

Speaker 3: Oh. Okay.

Speaker 2: I think it could be [00:04:00] business, could be per business is fun, but if you have a personal one, that’s fun too.

Speaker 3: I, I’m routinely changing my mind on things around my gym.

I fought hard, so hard against. Becoming a facility that leaned hard into developing or delivering pitching instruction. And then I always said, I will never, ever allow hitting inside my facility because I don’t wanna listen to it and I don’t wanna ensure it. And now if you listen closely enough, you can hear bats in the [00:04:30] background of mine.

And I’ll tell you what, as much as I thought I wasn’t gonna like it, every time I hear a bat ping. I hear a cash register.

Speaker 4: A cash register. You love cash.

Speaker 3: I have sure as shit changed my mind on that because

Speaker 4: making it ring,

Speaker 3: I’ve come to learn that is a revenue stream that is not seasonal. If things go bad, interesting.

On the field in a game for a pitcher, they can’t come to my gym for a tuneup that night. ’cause there’s only so many bullets in the gun. For lack of a better term. Yeah. That’s like a volume [00:05:00] maintenance thing. But with hitters, if they have a shitty day at the plate. They’re like, I gotta get right. I gotta get outta my head ing.

Yeah. And they might come over immediately following a game and we don’t stop monetizing them. So I know that’s not a gen pop answer, not something No.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s, everybody can relate. That’s fair.

Speaker 3: But

Speaker 2: yeah. But any gym owner can relate to, I didn’t think I should do this. And this is an interesting example too, because typically.

If I’m a broken record about anything, I’m like, too many services cut your services, your answers services sucked or not making money. And it sounds like this was something you were [00:05:30] resistant to do, but now is making a very awesome financial sense for you. And I’m curious to understand, did you. Is that a revelation for you?

Did you not, it sounds like it’s going well for you. Were you, I presume, not clear that it was gonna be, the juice was gonna be worth the squeeze

Speaker 3: I was in,

Speaker 2: or was it just the aesthetic of I don’t want to hear the things hitting?

Speaker 3: No, I think that was an excuse that I made to justify not chasing it. However, the other thing that’s worthy of, no Mark, we have talked at many.

On many occasions over recent months on the [00:06:00] podcast, privately, publicly at seminars that I was relocating my business and the reality of my situation was that I was in a building for 18 years and my space just wasn’t designed to accommodate it. So the cost associated with makes sense reconfiguring an existing gym to make something like that work were way higher.

Just a much bigger hurdle than starting from zero in a new space. Configuring it exactly the way we wanted. So it was, yes. So much less disruptive. ’cause people came [00:06:30] in to day one in our new space and they were like, whoa, that’s cool you have hitting here. Yeah. Whereas if I did it in the old space, we were gonna have to give something up in the eyes of the user.

Yeah. And so clients would be like, Hey, that sucks. That’s where we used to push the sled.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Or. God knows what they did in that space. And so it was way less disruptive in that sense. And our facilities only give us so much wiggle room. We can’t get that creative. Adding something that requires a 12 by 70 space just out of nowhere.

Speaker 2: Man it [00:07:00] is. I mean, what a great example too, of a also being in a positive way. Opportunistic. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking a lot about the podcasting you do with my buddy Joe meo, and one thing he talked about was like opportunistic purchases for strategic. And I took that to be, oh yeah. Sometimes you just do things ’cause it’s here.

I might as well capitalize on it. I think. I’m not always the best strategic thinker actually, but I think I’m like a very good when I see the thing opportunistic. But it sounds like in the previous scenario, there was no easy way to do it, and you just saw the opportunity and you claimed it, you clutched it.

Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. And I [00:07:30] think, maybe not something that I’ve changed my mind on, but what I’m starting to learn as I’m teaching our systems to new employees or colleagues, things like that. I never knew what I was doing when I was building any of these things. And so these systems weren’t installed. So much as they just were like born out of necessity, grown and iterated over time.

Exactly. They were grown. Yes. And so maybe I’ve allowed myself on occasion to believe like we designed this like thing that [00:08:00] we plugged in and it started printing money for us. No, we reacted and sometimes we saw opportunity and we jumped on it, but this opportunity was big and there were moments in this transition where John and I had to say, Hey.

This is a chance to give our community a wholesale facelift, understand that we’ve really reinvested in their experience.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 3: And we decided to spend a lot more money than we were ever budgeting for on new equipment. Yep. And new [00:08:30] technology and new aesthetic that just wasn’t in the game plan. And we were like, you know what?

This, this is the time. We’re not gonna get another reset ever.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you got the lemons and you made the lemonade. You made the lemonade.

Speaker 3: Exactly.

Speaker 2: Our next question here, most impactful educational experience. So this can be, I would request, Pete, if I can demand of you. I’d love something formal, if I may. So not like the school of hard knocks.

I’d love to hear about your most impactful, formal educational experience and what you learned from it, how it shaped.

Speaker 3: Okay, I’m gonna give you a [00:09:00] micro, super actionable one. I took a course at like the local college extension school on Excel. Like a deep, deep dive on understanding Excel and oh my God, complete and utter game changer for us in the early stage of our business.

So learning just how to, I would say, utilize tools that. There’s like there, we barely scratch the surface on how we use things like Google Sheets and Excel as [00:09:30] far as their capabilities and this

Speaker 2: borderline free call, I think Ke Keer does a little more than scratch servers, but I don’t, I definitely scratch the surface, but I’m so glad you said that Pete.

’cause that is an example of such like a not sexy thing that to be honest, we’ve, it took us. Longer probably then shifted where I was like, oh man, the gym owners don’t know how to use any of these things because Michael is so unbelievably good at it and in a grand single life, look, I wound up being pretty dangerous at it, but I’m like totally self-taught and it took us a long time to [00:10:00] understand how.

Little with love. My Jim was listening how little skill many of you have. It’s like you really do not know how to use the software. And even if you think you do, to your point, Pete, it’s such a great example of just a foundational thing. We are knowledge workers like, like understanding how to use a platform like Sheets or Excel.

That is our sword as knowledge workers like that is one of the primary tools we use. And I mean what a master stroke of taking a course. Yeah. It’s funny ’cause I think we’ve also discussed for years about, for a long time we were like, do we need a playbook on Excel? And I think, I [00:10:30] believe what we did, so I can’t promise it.

This is a special proprietary for unicorn society. I think we just linked to some good free ones. ’cause these days too, there’s so many good free ones online. It’s not that hard and it’s worth the effort because the payoff is. Massive. And it sounds like that was your experience. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that I’ll totally echo what you just said, which is if this were today here and now.

I’d probably just go find it in a series of free tutorials and really cool, simple lectures because it definitely exists and yeah. But the point was, I remember my wife had to take this course, [00:11:00] it was maybe 12, 13 years ago, and she came back from it like intoxicated with this ability to write like little Excel code.

Yeah. And to the point where she came back and she’s like, I gotta show you something so cool. And I’m like, cool. How did you become so excited about Excel? But I realized, oh, I could. Listen, I could do this two or $300 course, write it off for our business. Oh yeah. And it has, oh yeah. Delivered disproportionate returns for a very long time.

Yeah. Yeah. That that’d be my answer. Love that. Can I give you a second [00:11:30] answer? Yeah. The first ever, like real in-person event that I went to the fitness summit in 2015, my first chance to lecture. Oh,

Speaker 2: okay. Yeah. Oh sure.

Speaker 3: It helped me realize. Look

Speaker 2: at this guy first. First event he spoke at.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. That was a fun one.

I went from no public speaking experience to lecturing like after Brett Contreras and before, I don’t know. They were like all the names were and I just got slotted in there and got lucky. But what I learned that those things aren’t actually continuing education events. There just the best [00:12:00] networking experiences you’ll ever find.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker 3: yeah, certainly

Speaker 2: as well. Certainly. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And look, I’m sure I learned things. But I,

Speaker 2: yeah, it was, I pretty like macro heavy, so I don’t know how relevant was for you. It was pretty macro, pretty,

Speaker 3: yeah. Variable heavy. But also, I remember, I’m, I, I’m sure I met you, crossed paths with you, but I met you and Harold at that event and No, that’s

Speaker 2: right.

Yeah. I think we,

Speaker 3: I was gonna say that I think when I’m sitting here. Right now because of that event, because you were in the room and you and Harold almost [00:12:30] immediately invited me to my second public speaking opportunity, which was your motivation and movement lab that you had, I think in 2016 or something, and wheels were in motion.

And next thing you know, you and I are definitely lecturing a lot of things together and doing these things for lockstep. But my takeaway was that continuing education does not mean you need to walk away having learned a lesson. If you walk away with a better Rolodex, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s certainly true and obviously depends a little on someone’s like career goals, [00:13:00] but man, that that’s been true for me.

It’s particularly at this point now. And the other thing too that’s interesting is, and again, gym owners be critical thinkers, whether this is depending if you’re a local, independent gym owner. This is still true, but it might be a different network you’re plugging into because of what bi Unicorns has become, which wasn’t notably even a glimmer in my eye in 2015.

Really just in the past, like honestly a year, as you all know, it’s like all of a sudden we’ve been like, whoa. All these like relationships that people we’ve known for years now getting into really cool stuff together, which I’m teasing you. Podcasts you’ll hear more soon. You’ll hear more [00:13:30] soon. But anyway, cool stuff.

Speaker 3: Can I tell one more story about that, that three 15 event. I might have told, oh boy, maybe,

Speaker 2: are we gonna get canceled?

Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead. No, this isn’t a bad thing. I sat at the back of the room watching lecture after lecture, let’s say I went in like the second slot after lunch or something like that, and I was sitting next to Dean Somerset for three hours.

We’re chatting in between presentations and I knew him through my business partner at the time, Tony Genor, and we’re just like. Shooting the shit for hours. And as you remember, Lou Schuler was the mc at these events [00:14:00] and it was pretty cool to me. It’s, oh, like an editor from Men’s Health is about to do my introduction and he started to intro me for my lecture and I look over at Dean and he Is you ready to go?

And I was like, look at this. And I showed him my watch. It had a little heart rate monitor on it, and my resting heart rate was 188 beats per minute, and I hadn’t moved for three hours. And Dean, wait,

Speaker 2: it was 188.

Speaker 3: I was having a panic attack getting ready to lecture. Wow.

Speaker 2: That that might have been an artifact if it was 180 8.

I don’t know, as somebody fixed a lot

Speaker 3: about

Speaker 2: [00:14:30] heart

Speaker 3: rate, I just remember him putting his pain on my shoulder and being like, Hey,

Speaker 2: you were having a

Speaker 3: physiological response. Are you okay? Because I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to go up there. So I went up and I lectured, and I think I got maybe 10 minutes into the material and I realized, oh shit.

I can’t mess this up because I’m telling my story. I, it wasn’t like, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna learn a concept and I’m gonna go teach it to this room full of accomplished fitness professionals. I went in and I remember I gave a whole lecture on Keyman risk because it was the year after Eric had left for Florida to [00:15:00] open our second facility, and I was talking about what happens when the name on the business steps away and how do you survive it, and what do we do to thrive?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 3: And I realized minutes into this presentation. I’m literally the only person on the planet that knows the answer to these questions. There is no wrong thing I could say. Let’s just roll with this and it was a blast. And I don’t think I’ve ever had stage fright again. Once, not even a single Oh time.

Oh wow. And huh. That full blown anxiety attack lasted like five to 10 minutes. And I came off and [00:15:30] dean’s, I gotta tell someone about this. This, I gotta, you need to look into this.

Speaker 2: Tell doctor about it. Yeah. Amazing. This might partly, and the next one, this next one is tell me about, and I think I might know the answer, but the hardest experience you’ve had in your career.

What did it teach you and how did you grow from it?

Speaker 3: Oh, you were on the receiving end of this hard experience. I, for a number of years, for big parts of 10 years, underpaid and underappreciated my best employees, and [00:16:00] I got kicked in the nuts because there was a day when two of them decided to leave and soon thereafter, they poached a third.

I would say without, this is not a hyperbolic number. They pulled in excess of $200,000 of revenue from our business in less than a calendar year, just DMing all our clients and saying, Hey, you know us. We’re cheaper. Come on over. Let’s do this thing. And I had to look in the mirror. And realized that as much as I didn’t love [00:16:30] some of the, we’ll say ethical or integrity type components of their moves, there was definitely some blame sitting on my side of the table.

And as I went through those kind of like. I said panic, panic attacks. I had you on the other end of the line. I remember I was talking to Luca here and there. I talked to John Goodman a number of times and I was getting life coaching from people.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Being like, how do I dig out of this thing? How do I fix this thing?

And you guys were there for me a lot during what felt like [00:17:00] just this massive inflection point. And it turned out it was because. My, my employee retention is a whole different animal now, and the way we take care of our team is so much different than the way we value our staff. And I learned some really challenging lessons there the hard way, but I absolutely wouldn’t change it because if we were still doing what we had been doing, we would have this like wake of disgruntled former.

Under compensated staff members [00:17:30] and underappreciated people and it just wouldn’t be good juju.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Listen to, to your credit, obviously it’s every gym owner’s nightmare, right? It’s like your staff running away and trying to steal your clients. And I know that was hard. I remember that time and Yeah. The thing I just wanna flag back to is how rare it is for you to both acknowledge.

They probably could have done a little differently, but also you’re asking yourself, okay, what role did I play in this? And I just think that speaks really highly of you and a piece of, no doubt you’re continuing professional success, my friend.

Speaker 3: I probably didn’t come up with the idea to ask myself that.

I bet [00:18:00] Keeler was like, Hey man,

Speaker 2: yeah, it’s maybe this one’s on you, but still you could have dismissed. Then you should be like, Nope. It’s on them. I am perfect now. No one’s to blame. Other people to blame. Alright, this next question I maybe this will relate, or maybe it’ll be different. So we talk obviously a lot about community, right?

Community for gyms, create community. We really aspire to and I think have built a really awesome community in the unicorn society. And I’m just curious, I asked here the same question he asked me, we’re all around the same age. We’re married, you and I have [00:18:30] kids. I’m curious, what role do you see community playing for you at this point in your life?

Speaker 3: It’s as big as it’s ever been. But so the communities that I find myself in definitely evolve. And I, I think you’re probably learning at this point based on Cecilia’s age. You’re who? You Celestia. Cel. Sorry. Celestia, sorry.

Speaker 2: That’s okay. You dunno my

Speaker 3: kids name for me for a long time name. When I started hearing Cece, then I started hearing you full name her and it threw me off [00:19:00] my

Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.

I’m probably the only, she’s gonna be like an adult and everyone’s gonna call her Cece and I’m just gonna be like, that’s like the dad move. The dad’s like the only person. Celestia.

Speaker 3: Yeah. She was just CC’d me for a long time growing up. I’ve,

Speaker 2: yeah, she’s CC’d everybody in the world than me

couple

Speaker 3: times now ’cause I’m an asshole.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s fine.

Speaker 3: However, we get to a point when we have kids. Where the reality is, our friend circles are, who do our kids go to school with? Who do they play sports with? Uhhuh, who are they in clubs with? Who are they? And yeah, and it is funny because I remember as I was jumping into that stage in life, I was like, oh, [00:19:30] this sucks.

I’m not looking for new friends. I’m not gonna be friends with these strangers. What’s going on? And now my closest friends in the world, like I travel with them, we go on vacations, we like, they’re blowing up my phone right now with how are we all gonna get together this weekend and hang out and stuff like that.

They started because we met ’em at daycare. And

Speaker 2: yeah,

Speaker 3: my community is ever evolving on the home front, but I have two definitively different communities. I’ve got my work community and I’ve got my home community. And I know this is gonna sound sacrilegious because what we [00:20:00] tell every gym owner is like, the best place to start is with your own network.

Help your friends. Serve your friends. I go outta my way not to bring my home community into my gym. And I know that’s

Speaker 2: yeah,

Speaker 3: absolutely nuts. But. I don’t want to be accountable to their experience. It’s just like that. I get that. My dad told me when I was a kid, don’t lend any money to family or friends unless you’re ready to never get it back.

Mm-hmm. And not be mad. And it’s kind of, I don’t wanna lend anyone our services in exchange for compensation. ’cause I don’t want, I don’t wanna let somebody down. [00:20:30]

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Is that crazy?

Speaker 2: We obviously did it. I don’t think so. We did a ton of that at MFF and I. I, for what’s worth, I actually have the same instinct and it’s interesting over the years, even with Biz for Unicorns, sometimes if I have, yeah.

If someone is like a friend, first and foremost. I feel a little like I’m uncertain just kissing my sister or something about, and also I’m not like an aggressive kind of like sales person anyway. But yeah, there is a different dynamic for me when someone, it’s, to some extent, it’s almost unavoidable, right?

Because I’ve certainly become like friends with a lot of clients over the years and that’s not [00:21:00] necessarily bad, but it certainly does add a different dynamic when you have both the personal and professional relationship. So I, I very much get and see the appeal of them having a separation of the church and the state there.

Speaker 3: I’m all for becoming friends with clients. I struggle with turning friends into clients.

Speaker 2: Selling your friends and clients. Yeah, and listen, and again, I think in general, it’s funny you say, I haven’t really thought about this before. I guess we, because we really do push that. It tends to be, in my mind, I’m thinking often what I call independent trainer plus model, like the early stage gym owner that doesn’t wanna run paid [00:21:30] ads, that doesn’t have a base of clients.

Because I think that becomes less necessary and arguably the juice might not be worth the squeeze anymore. Once you have a critical mass of existing clients where it’s like particularly you don’t really need the clients, you don’t need like probably hard selling your pals into it. I mean, everyone wants more business, but Yeah, I totally get that.

I totally get that.

Speaker 3: Yeah. But to your question. Community is very important to me. I think I would be, I would struggle with depression if you took the those two separate communities and just removed them from my life because they are part of my identity, the [00:22:00] community I associate with.

Speaker 2: Don’t go through life alone.

Don’t go through life alone. We are, believe it or not. Pete, we already jumping into our rapid fire questions here, but you can take a little more time if you want. So this next one. If you could do another job in an unrelated industry, what would that be?

Speaker 3: I think, or I don’t think, I’ve always been very interested in architecture and things of that.

If I were to go back in time. I wanted to go. I remember I was interested in the Rhode Island [00:22:30] School of Design and I did not have the grades for it ’cause I was an asshole academically as a high school student. But that would be the place I would look. It’s always fascinated me.

Speaker 2: Fun, fun, fun. Favorite non-work hobby or pastime?

Speaker 3: Another good one. I play men’s league soccer during the fall and the springtime. We have a break for the summer break, and I don’t play indoor soccer during the winter months, but I’m a goalkeeper. [00:23:00] I play every Sunday morning for probably about 25 weeks of the year, and I love it. It’s, it is. I love it. So intoxicating for me, I like, it’s easy.

It’s not disruptive to my family. Games are at eight in the morning and they’re in, they’re all inside of about a half hour from my house. And I got a couple buddies that like, that’s even one of my communities, like my men’s league team is a community that, yeah, those are some guys that, that, like I count on seeing just for a couple hours every weekend and [00:23:30] it keeps me super level.

And you know what I love about it, mark? It has. Nothing to do with the two communities we’ve talked about. It’s like a whole new group of people that I interact with who don’t. Yes. Like there are so many people on that team who have no idea what I do for a living and Oh yeah. I think that’s awesome because I definitely identify as like Pete, the gym owner, in just about every other aspect of my life.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. It, it’s nice to have, uh, communities, one can be professionally anonymous and I think large that’s been my experience in my social group here in New York. Yes. And to that, [00:24:00] alright, next one is, these are some easy ones. Favorite food.

Speaker 3: Favorite food, cereal. It’s my Vice. I’d eat a whole box of cereal every night if you let me.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Wow. And what brand? Any particular? Uh,

Speaker 3: if I’m not trying to really boil apples and be an idiot, it would be like Honey Bunches of Oats or maybe Frosted Mini Weeds. But I would happily sit down and eat a whole box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and not Oh, I’ll get you. Yeah. I’m a big, sweet tooth. I definitely would let go off the rails if I could.

Speaker 2: Yes. What about favorite? Ooh, this is a tough [00:24:30] one. Pete. Favorite book?

Speaker 3: Favorite book? Oh. That’s really hard, mark, that’s,

Speaker 2: you can do like a favorite book release some of the Pressure Valve.

Speaker 3: Yeah, A favorite book early on when I started really getting into reading back in that 20 fifteens window that we talked about.

I remember gifting the book zero to one a lot because I thought that kind of manifesto from Peter Thiel’s spoke to me at the time and that was pretty awesome. And so since that time. Atomic habits was pretty impactful. Got [00:25:00] me, got me thinking and gifting that as well. And I don’t know, outside of that, I’d have a hard time really saying, this one changed my life.

Speaker 2: Yes. Yes sir. Cool.

Speaker 3: Can next one tell me, can you tell me your favorite book while we’re here? Because

Speaker 2: Pete, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have to listen my podcast, Pete.

Speaker 3: Alright.

Speaker 2: You have to listen my podcast, which is funny ’cause now that you asked me, I don’t even remember what I said. But I do remember that Keira’s interview I think will be like 30.

Yours will be 30. And mine was like. 95 minutes because I don’t shut up. Okay. Next one is, Pete, what is your fa? This was like the [00:25:30] fast part where Mark answers in only 17 minutes when you ask his favorite drink. Next question is, what is your favorite drink, your favorite liquid favorite consume down your throat?

Speaker 3: My favorite, uh, I like a mojito on a tropical vacation.

Speaker 2: Okay. All right. All right. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Very specific context related to that favorite travel destination.

Speaker 3: I like to go on a single ski trip every winter with either a couple buddies or my brother who lives out in Colorado. So I will head out to the, somewhere between Vail and Aspen Region, region [00:26:00] for a weekend of skiing.

That would be one of my favorites. And with my family, I enjoy, we actually go down, my parents have a condo in Fort Lauderdale that they bounce between their Boston home and their Florida home, and when they’re not in Fort Lauderdale. It is the place that we go to do to use their stuff and drive their cars and fill their fridge, and it is unremarkable in that we do the same thing every time we go.

And we’ve got our favorite restaurants, we’ve got our favorite routine, and my boys love it [00:26:30] more than anything. And so it’s just fun to share that.

Speaker 2: That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. I must tell you, my adorable three and a half year old daughter is feeling a little under the weather and she’s colored up in, in the bed near Beamer right now, which I guess means I’m confessing to everyone.

I’m recording this in my bedroom. That’s true. Everyone don’t judge me. Pete, last, last, you’re a little bit bigger here, a little bit more in depth here. First one is, who is your hero and why? It could be someone, it could be a historical figure, it could be anyone that you look up to that you feel that [00:27:00] person who identifies a hero.

And why are they hero to you?

Speaker 3: So I’m dealing with a little bit of a recency bias here, but I as had a terminally ill mother-in-law for a very long time. She was diagnosed with like maybe months to live in 2017 and she passed this year, right? And so she went from three months to five years. I remember they told her nine 9% of the population with your diagnosis will make it five years.

And after year [00:27:30] five she did, she hiked Machu Picchu and she went on that trip alone with no friends.

Speaker 2: Epic

Speaker 3: in watching the biggest hard ass I’ve ever met and toughest like. Mom and grandmother, she’s my hero over the last several years. Mm-hmm. I watched her really grind it out to be a meaningful part of her grandkids lives, and it was inspiring.

So that’s recent, but pretty

Speaker 2: amazing.

Speaker 3: Holy shit. Was she tough? So [00:28:00] that’s my answer.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible. Um, awesome man. The last one, so this relates a little bit to some of the conversations we’ve been having internally. We’ve had a kinda level set here. We’ve had a thing going good for us.

Things are going pretty great. We’ve had a lot of growth, we have a lot of eyeballs. Both of the growth of the visit itself, the gym owners like choosing to work with us and then also a lot of growth even in the email list. And we’ve been thinking a little bit about what do we wanna stand for? What matters to us.

So my final question to you, Pete, is when you look at the fitness industry, if you could change one thing about [00:28:30] it, what would you change?

Speaker 3: I’d get rid of social media.

Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Hot take. Have I influenced you in that? I’m curious to hear more about your thinking behind that. Say more.

Speaker 3: The social media just makes me sad and I have to play the game and that stresses me out even further.

’cause it’s how we built our business. It’s a big part of the reason why I’m on the team at BFU, but I had. I’ve got a 9-year-old who, everything’s literal to him. He just,

Speaker 2: yes.

Speaker 3: Why are you always on your phone, dad, I have to be for work. I’m gonna put it down.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 3: And [00:29:00] then he said, why do you love your phone so much recently?

And I was like, I don’t love my phone. I resent my phone. And he said, then why don’t you get rid of it? And I was like, I can’t, I, I literally cannot get rid of it. I needed to do my job. And he’s just get a flip phone like grandpa. ’cause my. My father-in-law recently abandoned the smartphone, which I admire, but I can’t pull off can you?

My son was like, that’s

Speaker 2: gonna be us one day.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Hope that’s how know we won wife when we go home. Oh, I hope so. But ultra. But my was just like, no, you can get rid of [00:29:30] it, dad. You don’t have to keep it. And I’m like, no, I need to for work. And he is like, no, you don’t. You can throw it away. And it made me realize, one, he’s totally right, but two.

It’s right now it’s the cost of doing business. But that’s the first thing I’d get rid of. It’s, it’s not, there’s not a lot of good done on social media in our industry as far as I’m concerned. If you want a different answer, if that feels a little too cliche.

Speaker 2: No, I don’t think so.

Speaker 3: I don’t, I’ll take

Speaker 2: whatever you got.

Yeah. What else?

Speaker 3: I don’t want to tell you what I would take away. I’d tell you what I’d bring back in the fitness industry. Yeah. And I think that [00:30:00] there was an approach to continuing education and a

Yes,

Speaker 3: uh, voracious. Hunger for content? Yes and

Speaker 2: yes.

Speaker 3: Specifically long form content and learning in increments that were more than 12 to 22 seconds.

Speaker 2: Yes,

Speaker 3: I long for those days.

Speaker 2: Going to workshops and watching DVDs. 90 minutes of A DVD. Yeah. Was it different? Yeah. This, I’ve been reflecting a lot since our chat. We chatted obviously about this at our annual retreat a couple [00:30:30] weeks ago, and I was really struck by particularly your assessment. You have a unique, a vantage point having done this, are y’all, are you at 20 years?

Past 20 years?

Speaker 3: No, we are at 18.

Speaker 2: Okay. So still nearly 20 years. With a lot of that time having a thriving internship program, you really have an unusual seat. To watch the way continuing education, particularly for younger aspiring trainers that look to be fitness professionals. The way that has evolved, it’s wild, it’s interesting and somewhat discouraging.

Speaker 3: It’s not even close to what it [00:31:00] was even eight, nine years ago, and I know it. You know what? I blame social media and that.

Speaker 2: Yep. I listen. I do too. Get off our lawns, kids. RIP. Listen, thank you so much. This was super fun. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed this. Hope you enjoyed this opportunity to get to know us.

If, and if not, then you’re not listening, so it doesn’t matter. You didn’t, you popped off. You didn’t listen. That’s fine. As always, thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you following us along. We appreciate you giving us the gift of attention. [00:31:30] Until next time, you have a great day listeners.

Speaker 3: Thank you, mark.

Goodbye all.

Speaker 2: Thanks Pete.